Dux Britanniarum Campaign - April 565 AD

Second month of raiding in the Dux B campaign and this month saw myself raiding into my Pictish neighbours terriotory and trying to lift some cattle in the Cattle Raid scenario.

With both myself and Andy (my Pictish Neebur) pretty much novices with the Dux B rules, we were a bit hit or miss with the rules but luckily there was a fair bit of sage advice on hand to help us out if we got really stuck (which we did on a couple of occaisons) but we muddled through a despite a couple of errors on our part, mainly through assumption of things rather than anything else, we played through the game and had much enjoyment from the event.

With myself trying to get at least two of the three stands of livestock from one end of the table and off he other I knew things were going to be a bit of an uphill struggle. Getting three moves free before Andy's Picts appeared at the far end of the table to intercept (couldn't have been a worse place for me for him to appear) my forces did their best to high tail it towards the other end of the table.

The inevitable clash came on the far half of the table with some skirmishing which I got a slight advantage with and my cavalry easily saw off his at the far end of the table. So far so good.

First major mistake now followed with us believing that my cavalry couldn't charge to their rear (into the rear of his warriors nicely lined up in front of mine about to charge) we assumed that they couldn't do an about face so instead I charged his missile troops and scattered them to the four winds. Andy subsequently agreed that this situation if I'd been able to attack his infantry would have drastically changed the course of the game, but c'est la vie).

Andy's Pictish warriors then charged my warriors and scored a whopping 20 hits and did obscene amount of kills and shock on my chief and his warriors who, funnily enough, reeled back and withdrew back in the direction from which they came for a couple of turns while my Lord frantically took off shock from the warriors until they stood pretty much where they had started.

Things started to get pretty confusing from this point and to be honest quite exciting, with all the troops on the table going this way and that and too-ing and fro-ing right across the table in a see-saw match with neither gaining the upper hand but the Scots picking off more of the Picts until honour's were pretty much equal again.

Eventually, time really beat us and with this the last game still going on in the hall, and a bit of a crowd had gathered to watch and shout abuse (sorry encouragement) at the two sides, Andy was supposed to be flying out on hols at 5:00am the next morning, I called a halt to the festivities as the game was still up for grabs but was going to take a fair bit of time to draw to a conclusion in my favour at any rate, I gave the honour's to Andy (and told him he could keep his scabby cows, I didn't want they anyway) by way of a Pyrrhic victory, Andy allowing me to withdraw un-molested., as our losses meant we are both going to sitting out of the raiding next month already and didn't want to make things worse.

A pretty exciting game as I said and certainly picked up lot's on the rules for next time. Although May 565 AD might be a bit quiet round these parts.